by JonathanAquino
6 subcomments
- I’ve been experimenting with a way to make code reviews more understandable - turning tricky pull requests into short comic strips.
The blog post shows an example generated from a real PR: summarizing the changes, anthropomorphizing the components, and making the flow visually obvious. It’s meant to help reviewers grasp intent quickly and make reviews a bit more fun.
Curious whether others have tried visual or narrative aids in their review process, and whether this could be practical for real teams.
by namanyayg
3 subcomments
- Interesting idea but unfortunately the given example comic makes very little sense.
It was difficult to parse even as someone who's familiar with these concepts, and I think it will hurt more than help any newbies.
- It seems to me the level this comic is at is such that anyone who needs an aid like this would not be capable of providing a meaningful review on the pull request.
If the goal is to encourage rubber-stamping by bystanders, it might help.
by SoftTalker
2 subcomments
- We are well and truly doomed. Why not just make it a TikTok.
by joshdavham
0 subcomment
- You actually might be on to something... AI aside, it's often a good idea to include visuals in a PR such as diagrams.
But having something like a comic where it's both visual and communicative in a more conversational/narrative way could prove pretty effective. Also if you can throw some humour in there, it could potentially add even more comprehensibility, etc.
Thanks for sharing!
- I thought this was going to be about the Comics Code Authority.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comics_Code_Authority
I know this is hacker news but you do get all sorts posted here, that's my excuse.
- not sure about for pull requests, but for protocols it could be interesting.
I asked it to generate a comic for https negotiation over tcp https://imgur.com/a/0p0Pzum I think with a bit more prodding it might be interesting for documenting protocols
- In the same way that many people would rather read imperfect ESL than LLM text, I would rather you draw stick figures yourself. The fact that this is a product of AI means anything I see in it may be 'hallucinated' or otherwise incorrect.
- If it’s an addendum then fine. But can’t replace textual review which is much easier to parse, at least for me.
BTW, amazing they chose a review that exemplifies why hooks are a horrible horrible mistake for public API.
- The example probably wasn't the best pick to demonstrate this, but I could see this making sense for e.g. linter rules (with fewer panels per rule).
- Fun little comic :) wish it had more about WHY the rules exist, but I assume that would be hard to squish into a panel
by qwertytyyuu
0 subcomment
- Looks like a fun inclusion
by lukebechtel
0 subcomment
- ok fine I'll add another github workflow...
- Any code review complicated enough to benefit from this should be split up into smaller units for review.